Sometimes big IT companies and FOSS movement looks like incompatible things. But this is not the full true. There are many connections from and to, who bind big business with many projects, related to FOSS. Many of them are not made public because of many reasons, but exist and will be interesting for everyone, who has touch with this movement.

What big IT company's give to FOSS

(FOSS - free and opensource software)

Is no so strange to see business to open initiative about sponsoring some projects or schools, organizations and most the time this "go" directly to the headlines in news. But there is some kind of sponsorship, who normally is not announced, but is significant for many people who use, develop, test and build open source and free software.

For example SUN Microsystems after buying StarOffice open his source and after few years of hard work we have excellent product - OpenOffice. This fact is strange for me because SUN sell and two office products enter in direct competition, but maybe commercial support give company enough place on the market in mid and high-end companies. It is normal that SUN gets ideas from opensource project and incorporate them in its own product, but this is not so wrong, just business. But the final product - OpenOffice is flexible, cover most of office work areas and with some improvements (like speedup) can blow out commercial products.

Other project, opened for FOSS community is Netscape. I know the long and hard way from the above source to excellent products of Mozilla projects, but result is one of the "killer" applications for today's Internet world. For example Firefox - it's fast, safe, extendable, and multiplatform - I love it. In additional SUN (unofficially) support a web site, where everyone can get free and opensource software precompiled for his own operating system. Another cool opensource is Project Looking Glass - 3D desktop for X is posted (just the core) under GPL

IBM also gives to FOSS some very interesting software. Everyone knows JFS - one good journal filesystem who's not something extraordinary, but works fast, is reliable and now is official part of Linux kernel. Many java and not only developers use Eclipse as development tool thanks to IBM. This instrument is extremely flexible, full with plugins, platform independent, highly customisable, a little slow, but great.

This year (2004) from consortium Eclipse is reorganized into a not-for-profit corporation. Additionally, some very interesting projects as Web Tools Platform, Test and Performance Tools Platform and Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools make this platform almost universal. Other interesting project, whose now is distributed under open license, is OpenDX. This is the open source software version of IBM's Visualization Data Explorer Product. This is an instrument, used for visualization of scientific, engineering and analytical data. Designed to be client/server application it can use benefits from contemporary distributed environments. But this is not all, IBM have on its own site a "long" page with FOSS projects, developed or sponsored directly or not from the company. Support of Linux especially is on very high level with extended list of drivers (video, disk controllers, sound chips, special units). For fans of reading is available free of charge big library of "redbooks" from company site.

Hewlett-Packard is big name in IT industry and has some contributions in FOSS as sponsorship of Debian, Open Source DB Benchmark, Linux Deskjet, OfficeJet and Inkjet Drivers, Dspace, PPTP Client, Handhelds.org, OpenSSI Clusters for Linux and many others. Its look like company prefers not to do directly work on projects. Instead, HP helps projects with hardware. Don't get me wrong, I do not depreciate this kind of help, it is so important to have computer to develop or test software, especially on big projects where computer farms can speedup process of development and testing. Additionally this company is a corporate patron of Free Software Foundation and Debian partner providing several high-end HPPA, IA-64 and IA-32 servers and workstations to Debian, and HP employs several developers to work on Debian HPPA and IA-64 ports. Maybe HP wants to have good relations with Cathedral and Bazaar (see The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond) because of big PC business and Microsoft Windows as dominated desktop operating system. Based on some publications attitude may change with the start of partnership with JBoss Inc. and MySQL AB. Additionally in products list you can find only few models of desktop and notebook PC's with preinstalled SuSE Linux. Many of HP printers have support of free operating systems (in this moment I see on web site only Fedora Core2 Linux and SuSE Linux 9.1 Pro support). Company offer many printer drivers for Linux, hosted on SourceForge. Different parts of above software are licensed under MIT license, BSD license and GPL. Of course list of printers cover only HP production.

SGI alto open some products to opensource world as KDB, Kernprof, NUMA kernel support, XFS, GLX, OpenGL Sample Implementation. As you see most of the projects are kernel oriented, who is directly related with company implementations of multiprocessor machines. My personal experience with XFS shows me great performance, but very small area of applications (work with big files - hundred of megabytes and much bigger)

RedHat have big contribution in FOSS. Company's developers' work on some of the greatest projects as Apache, OpenSSL, Gnome, RPM, eCos, cygwin, KDE, Mozilla and many others. Also provide ftp and web space for some projects: gcc, glibc, gdb, gnats, piranha and others. Months ago RedHat stopped free distributions and their support, but opened alternative project: Fedora. My personal opinion Fedora is more like test platform for next RedHat Enterprise Linux (who is paid) and distribution target experienced users, not newbie's. This act seems to be an attempt to delimit fans and customers.

Novell after incorporation of SuSE and Ximian open code of Evolution Connector and Yast, make available downloadable CD-ROM with personal version of SuSE Linux and trial version of server oriented product. Additionally SuSE Linux is available for install from company's site. This is not exactly what the people expect i.e. get ISO images, burn, boot and install, but above way have some advantages as downloading only that you will install, not pack of CD's or DVD's and only one gigabyte of installed software.

Oracle offer some projects, hosted on its own site as ASMLib - kernel driver for Automatic Storage Management for Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) - file system, suitable for cluster installations, NIC Failover - support of failover for network drivers, Timbo - internationalisation system and few kernels, optimised for RedHat Enterprise Linux.. All of the projects are licensed under GPL.

Microsoft has his own contribution to FOSS. The first (as I remember) is a package of truetype fonts as Arial, Times New Roman and others, named "core fonts for the web", who's free to use. Microsoft also makes other fonts (Tahoma and others) available as a part of their Internet Explorer product, but to use them you need Windows license. Also few projects are posted in SourceForge: Windows installer XML (WiX) - software allows developers to build installation packages for Windows, The Windows C++ Template Library (WTL), which allows developers to create graphic interfaces for Windows programs, FlexWiki -creating Web sites called wikis. First two projects are strictly oriented for Microsoft "world" but there are so many Windows users, who want to manipulate (install, uninstall, etc) software from FOSS world. By the way above projects are in to 5% of most popular and downloaded projects.

What big IT company's get from FOSS

SUN equip his operating system with many cool and handy packages offering "Companion CD", who's full with FOSS like Emacs, gcc, gdb, gimp, kde, webmin and many, many more. Additionally if someone is interest, can download from company's web site free of charge Gnome for SPARC and x86 Solaris. As a cool download (from SUN's point of view) you can get Grid Engine - software for building distributed computing environment. But the most interesting fact is that bash for example is part of default installation of the operating system. Company offers support and additional software for Cobalt Server OS - plain Linux for MIPS (early Cobalt products) or x85 processors. JDS Linux Desktop as the name says is Linux plus JVM (and nothing more) - commercial product, oriented for enterprise users. As a web browser is available for free download Mozilla Browser, because of absence of good free competitor - Netscape sink, Opera isn't free. Project Looking Glass, is just a bait to seize more markets with Java.

IBM use many free and opensource software in interesting manner. Linux is one of the favourite words for this company. From notebooks and PC workstations to "big iron" - all run Linux, support it and use it. But it is only the beginning, almost all company's value software products (DB2, Informix, Domino, WebSphere, Tivoli and Rational) run under this OS and (based on my tests) have good performance. By the way IBM have contracts with two companies, who sell Linux: RedHat and SuSE (now owned by Novell). Maybe this is strange, but to have "backup" supply is always wisely. My opinion is that IBM prefers to work with products of Novell especially after stop of distribution of free products and support of many versions from RedHat. But sometimes company's wish (Linux on any price and on any place) brings interesting situations as the possibility to run three OS'es (not simultaneously) on one server: OS/400, AIX and Linux. This fact can confuse some customers from one side and attract new from other side (principally Linux fans :-).

SGI use FOSS in very fundamental way. The most powerful company's servers use Linux as operating system with assistance of NUMA kernel modules. Possibly this version of Linux kernel is modified to support up to 256 Itanium2 processors. With servers come big bunch of opensource software of compilers, libraries, debuggers, profilers.

Hewlett-Packard have own UNIX - HP-UX and don't give a hint to change it. PC business is close committed with Microsoft and only few models of notebooks and desktop computers are offered with Linux (Debian). With every media kit of HP-UX Operating Environment come CD-ROM named HP-UX Internet Express, who is full of FOSS as Apache, webmin, bind, jabber, squid, openldap, samba and many, many other software. The absence of software like gcc or gdb looks strange, but there is web site, where every system administrator can get precompiled packages. On company's opensorce web server HP offers printer drivers for Linux, but all links forward me to web page in SourceForge, who obviously is supported by HP - it looks like the others HP sites and looks very professional (sorry folks, but many of projects' pages in above site are principally to give information and nothing more).

RedHat get the whole Linux, make own distribution and sell. Now use Fedora like test lab. This is normal (for company), but I don't like someone "stealing" my ideas and work, burn some CD's, package them with a few thin books and sell them for good amount of money. And the price of products is too high, I understand to buy Linux for 32000$ for "big iron" whose price is 3 millions, but not 250$ for 500 dollars PC. In my opinion is time to change something.

Novell gets many FOSS projects and host them on its development site (named Forge) with the only idea to offer users and system administrators good applications as Apache, MySQL, OpenSSH and others for their own operating system Netware and the company's most popular product - NDS. Projects are under weird mixture of licenses: from Apache and MIT to IBM, GNU Public License and many proprietary licenses. Maybe Novell wants to make some strange mix of Netware and Linux as operating system to grow up sales of NDS and accompanying products.

Oracle use FOSS only as stepping-stone for selling own products. As anyone can view all opensource projects are explicitly for company's database product. Supported operating systems are only enterprise versions of RedHat, SuSE and Asianix. The presence in Oracle Technical Network site some links to installation database on unsupported distributions as Debian, Gentoo and Fedora, is very interesting. Fact, who is in contrast with answers you can get from Oracle official support.

FOSS in advertisements and business plans of big IT companies

SUN doesn't use directly FOSS in its advertisements and this is normal because they have only one product (PC server) delivered with Linux. But sometimes I am watching on opensource web sites very interesting banners targeted Solaris. Here is a very thin competition and comparison between two operating systems (own and free as *BSD and Linux). By the way it is very interesting fact that there is presence a utility to start Linux programs who's coming with every copy of Solaris. This is only indication that SUN wants to attract some FOSS users to migrate (and pay support).

IBM uses FOSS and especially Linux on almost every his advertisement. Additionally seems the company wants to make it dominating operating system and to pillage most of the support market. If you dig in the company's web site you will find many and many documents, which will help you to work and live with Linux. This is true for enthusiast and professionals, but target is corporate and government sector, who need someone really big to stay behind it and provide extensive support. And IBM is one of the few companies who can make it and the more important, they what this.

Hewlett-Packard doesn't use FOSS nor as competitor, nor as alternative. But maybe this will change soon, based on statement from top management of company. As a top personal computer manufacturer will make big favour to FOSS posting drivers (especially if drivers are opensource) and can grow up sells, offering for example Linux support.

SGI emphasize on Linux without mentioning his own UNIX. Now the company understands that the magic word Linux make sells. IRIX offer some unique goodies in area of "hard" calculations, but most of the users prefer to buy cheap hardware, get free software, make some kind of shared environment as cluster nor search and buy expensive supercomputer.

Oracle uses FOSS and especially Linux as "painkiller" too and my opinion is they focus on Windows and Linux. Company's advertisements accent on making unstoppable database solutions.

Novell as if forgot about Netware and use SuSE Linux as principal platform for own products. But this won't help company to return 70 percents from network operating systems market (as years a go). Maybe some mixture of open and close source may give new horizons for sales managers.

In my opinion Microsoft has very interesting ideas about FOSS. It places advertisements in UNIX and FOSS sites. Generally company doesn't make direct competition between its own and opensource products except some (sponsored by Microsoft) in which compare incorrectly old versions of Linux for example and latest Company's operating system. This comparison looks like comparing apples and grape i.e. operating system only and OS plus many products in package. It is interesting Microsoft doesn't get as competitor OpenBSD ("Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!" - from front page of project's web site). I think Microsoft finds FOSS a real threat. There isn't other way to explain speeches and comments of Steve Ballmer about software patents. I think company will get more benefits if it become more opened (as standards for example) and care a little more about interconnections between its own products and FOSS projects.

Conclusion

It is pretty clear that business and FOSS communities have different values. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. In my opinion there is a place under the sun for everyone and everything. I personally prefer opensource as everyday operating system, but I use some applications not fount in FOSS projects, so I need proprietary software. Choice is yours, money you spend too.

dipl. eng. Romeo Ninov